For The Soul
by Princess Pinky
Summary: Ricky shows up at Adrian's door when she's plagued with the world's worst cold and she wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Can he make her feel better?
1. Chapter One

**A/N:** This story is probably a bit rough. I started it a couple months ago, but then it got trapped on my mom's computer, and I only just re-read it today and decided to finish it up. So obviously this takes place long before the beautiful ILY scene we got in the show. In fact, it probably takes place before John's birth, but I don't have an exact point in the timeline.

_**For The Soul**_

**Chapter One**

"Oh for crying out loud!" Adrian groaned. The words echoed as if she were yelling into the Grand Canyon. From her bedroom, she could hear persistent knocking from the front door and she did _not_ want to get up and go answer it _again_. "Of all the days for people to come over and try to sell me things, they have to choose the one where I feel like bashing my head into the wall until I'm unconscious."

Earlier that day, she'd already been to the door three times: once for a UPS package that had she'd been required to sign for, once for a woman selling Avon, and once for a perky Grace-like couple who were trying to get her to convert to some Christian-esq religion she had no intention of converting to. With the last ones, she'd point blank told them off and slammed the door, not having the will to make witty remarks and tell them that she didn't go around trying to get them to have sex so why should they try to get her to become a Christian, the way she usually did when she got such annoying and unwanted visitors.

Adrian rubbed the sides of her head. The knocking wouldn't go away and it was really starting to get to her. Finally, she threw up her pink and orange checkered covers and achingly stomped out of her room and into the living room, where the knocking was twice as loud and twice as painful to her sensitive ears. She cursed under her breath as she threw open the door and yelled, "Whatever it is I'm not interested!"

"Not even in me?"

Adrian's lips parted into an o-shape when she realized Ricky was standing outside the threshold. She frowned, then the frown gradually turned into a glare. "No," she spat, "not even in you."

"Why not?" he asked, undeterred.

"Go away." She began to shut the door, but he jammed his foot between the entrance. She snarled and threw up her hands. "Fine! Have it your way. Hang out. Just don't bother me or I swear I won't be responsible for what happens to you."

Ricky slipped into the apartment and shut the door. "You weren't at school today," he said, ignoring her hostility.

"So?"

"So I'm wondering why."

"Oh I don't know," she replied sarcastically. "Maybe because my eyes are bloodshot, my throat feels like it's one fire, and my head feels like the first and only time I ever had a hangover!"

"You have a hangover?"

"No! I have a _cold!_" She winced at the sound of her own voice and placed her hands to her ears. "Ugh, and you're making it worse. I'm going to my room, don't follow me!" she stomped back to her room and closed the door. As she was climbing back under her covers, the door opened. She groaned again and grabbed her pillow. "Leave me alone Ricky…please? I'm so _not_ in the mood today."

"What do you want?"

"Great. Selective hearing." She shoved her pillow her face and screamed into the extra thick fluff.

Ricky shrugged his shoulders. "Fine."

Adrian listened to the sounds of his shoes moving down the hallway. She closed her eyes beneath the darkness of her pillow and exhaled. "Finally…" The sheets crunched around her as she rolled over and nestled her head into her pillow, instantly falling back to sleep.


	2. Chapter Two

**A/N:** Since the first chapter is utterly short, I'm giving you two. This story will be broken up into three chapters.

_**For The Soul**_

**Chapter Two**

When she awoke again, it was hours later, to the sounds of shuffling in the kitchen. She winced, searching her mind for who might be in there. Her eyes spied the clock: it couldn't be her mother; was flying over France right about now, and it couldn't be her father, because he didn't have a key to the apartment yet.

Adrian fumbled around for her tissue box and discovered it was nearly empty: one tissue left. She pulled it out and blew her nose roughly. It was stuffed and she couldn't breathe through either side, it felt like there was some invisible plug up each nostril that she couldn't pull out. After the blow, however, she managed to get a miniscule whiff of the air before the plugs rematerialized.

"Is that…chicken?" she scrunched up her germ infested tissue and made a basket into her overflowing garbage can. "Am I delusional?" she wondered aloud. She didn't really want to get up and go check it out – she ached everywhere after all – but her curiosity eventually got the better of her and she managed to yank back her sheets.

As she stood out of bed, her line of vision began to tunnel. Things started going black until she could only see trough a tiny telescope hole in each eye and then finally those miniature round windows disappeared as well. She grasped for her dresser, but missed and tumbled to the ground instead. _"Oogh…"_

"Adrian?"

Adrian kept her eyes closed as she laid on the floor, not wanting to open them for fear everything would still be black. It was typical for her to get dizzy when she got sick and it was one of the many reasons she hated getting out of bed to do anything. But as she laid there thinking, a voice tickled the inner crevices of her mind. _Ricky?_

"Adrian," the voice said again.

This time Adrian felt hands on her bare arms. They were familiar hands that she knew each and every groove of inside and out. "Ricky?" she asked, this time out loud. _Am I dreaming or did I die?_

"Come on," he said in a whisper. It almost sounded as though he was trying to be sensitive to her pounding headache.

Adrian felt him pulling her up from the floor. She let him do all the heavy lifting; her strength was just not there. Besides, she liked the idea of him helping her out. It made her feel special, it made her feel that he really cared. "What are you still doing here?"

Ricky wrapped his arm around her waist, holding her upright. "I don't know," he coyly answered. "What were you doing on the floor?"

"Trying to find out who was robbing my house…I heard _someone_."

"Hmm." He placed his hand to her forehead. "Ah, a fever, that must be it. You're imagining things."

"Maybe I'm imagining this. _You._"

"Interesting. Maybe you are." Ricky slipped his arm under Adrian's legs and suddenly scooped her into his arms.

At first her mind screamed at her sudden loss of balance. She grasped his arm and dug her nails in to support herself, only to feel her legs draped over his arm like a towel on a bathroom rack. Her heart rate dropped as the notion of safety settled in, followed immediately by confusion. "What are you doing?" she inquired defensively. It only took a moment for her to realize he was carrying her out of her room. She started to kick her legs. "Ricky!" she bellowed. "What the hell!"

"Calm down," he grumbled as he carried her into the living room and placed her on the couch like a doll. He grabbed the folded fleece blanket and draped it over her. "Lay down and relax."

Adrian stared. _Is this really Ricky Underwood?_ She thought. _This can't be Ricky Underwood! I must be locked up in some insane asylum somewhere._ She blinked her eyes as she watched him walk into the kitchen and stir a wooden spoon in the pot on the stove. _Chicken_, she remembered. "What's that?"

"Chicken soup."

Her lips curved into a skeptical frown. "We don't have chicken soup," she fired back. "My mom hates it, she thinks it tastes too bland. What's really in there?"

"Chicken soup," he replied again, this time sticking the wooden spoon to his lips and tasting whatever he'd pulled out of the pot.

"I said-"

"You had leftover roasted chicken in the fridge," he replied smoothly. "You can do a lot with leftovers you know."

Adrian's mind began to spin. She remembered how Ricky had once made her a brown paper sack lunch and she'd felt like the most amazing girl in the world. "Are you saying you made chicken soup from scratch?"

"There's nothing to it," he replied offhandedly. He stirred the soup again and added a dash of salt, then he picked up the pan and moved it to a cold burner. As Adrian gaped at him, he began to fill a bowl with the contents of the pan.

Adrian tucked the fleece blanket under her toes and watched as Ricky brought her the bowl and a small plate with saltine crackers. She found herself smiling as brightly as the day he'd made her lunch. "Thanks," she squeaked.

"Sure." He sat down beside her as she stared into the bowl. "Something wrong?"

Adrian examined the small chunks of roasted chicken and various spices floating around in the golden broth. She shook her head. "No." As she brought the bowl closer to her face, the zesty aroma permeated her nostrils, unclogging them like Drano. She lifted the spoon to her lips and sipped a mouthful of the soup. Normally, she didn't even like soup. But somehow she found Ricky's chicken soup to be all that it was cracked up to be. "Oh my gosh," she exclaimed, "this actually tastes _good!_"

"You thought it wouldn't?" he asked, almost hurt.

"No. No, that's not it," she backpedaled, "I just don't like soup much that all." She shrugged her shoulders and fed herself another spoonful. "Thank you."

Ricky leaned casually into the couch cushion. "Yeah. Whatever."

Adrian sighed. "Whatever yourself," she mumbled. She closed her eyes and just allowed herself to inhale the soup for a while. "Why did you stay?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Because you looked like hell."

"But you didn't have to. And you didn't have to go out of your way to make me soup."

"I guess I just felt like it."

Adrian rolled her eyes as she consumed a bite with a tender piece of roasted chicken. She was _sure_ there was more to him staying than he was letting on, but she didn't feel like pressuring him. Being able to enjoy his company was good enough for her. "This is exactly what I needed."

"Really?"

"Mhmm. I can actually breathe again. You could patent this stuff, you know. It's way better than Vicks. And edible. A two-for-one." She licked her lips, tasting a harmony of spices that she knew from her mother's spice rack. Her mother never actually put the spices to use, but when she was four, she'd made a point to taste each one…and she'd never done it again until now. From the corner of her eye, she could see Ricky was staring at her. "What?" The corners of her mouth curled as she spoke.

"Nothing." He tucked his hands behind his head and reclined into the cushion, using his laced fingers as a net.

"I never knew you were so domestic," Adrian ventured. She swirled the spoon in her chicken soup.

"I'm not domestic," he remarked. "I'm resourceful. I've had to fin for myself for years."

"You say potato, I say _potato_." As she lifted the spoon to her lips, the skin above her left eye began to crinkle and pinch. The spoon promptly fell back into the bowl, which slipped from her hands. Hot liquid splashed into Adrian's lap and what didn't drench her cascaded across the couch, even managing to leave a fine chicken mist along Ricky's face and arms. Adrian's mouth twisted into a grimace as she shrieked.

There was dual pain: the initial shock in her left temple, which had been what caused her to drop the soup in the first place, followed by the secondary pain in her lap, from the terribly hot soup. Her hands seemed confused as to where they should go to: her head or her legs. But soon she felt a pressure on her lap, which seemed to be absorbing the hot soup. As the lightning bolt headache strike subsided, she squinted her eyes to find Ricky dabbing her legs with a cotton dish towel.

"Migraine?" he asked without meeting her eyes.

"More like periodic currents of electricity."

He examined the now yellow and sopping dish towel. "I'll be right back."

"_Wh-"_ She moved her hands into the air as she watched him disappear into the hallway and then dropped them to her sticky lap. "Oh _screw it_, I'm too tired for this crap." She angled her head onto the couch cushion and closed her eyes. _He makes me lunch and I fuck it up. Good going, Adrian!_ _Now he's off doing-_ Her eyes squinted as she heard water running from what sounded like the direction of the bathroom. "He's taking a bath?" Whatever it was, it was most definitely not the sink. _He must be rinsing off the towel…your big ass mess._ And the next thing she knew, the water was off.

Her bare toes wriggled underneath the fleece blanket and she briefly entertained the idea that maybe Ricky was drawing a bath for them to take together. Her lips curled in delight at the thought. But all at once, she shook it away. _Don't be an idiot. Ricky doesn't do romance, remember?_ When she looked towards the hallway again, she found him walking out of it. Without a word, he drew back her blanket and scooped her off the sofa. To her surprise, she thought she could smell lavender wafting off of him. _Or maybe he does…_


	3. Chapter Three

**A/N:** Last chapter. I'm not sure if it's as good as the other two, but I hope you all like it anyway.

_**For The Soul**_

**Chapter Three**

Her eyes were so glassed over that she was sure she looked like a druggie, her hair was a mass that an army could get lost in, and the bright yellow chicken soup stain on her lap made it look like she'd soiled herself. She was in no way up to her usual standards, but somehow, she still felt like a princess.

Maybe it was the cold, screwing with her senses, but as Ricky carried her down the hallway and crossed into the bathroom, she imagined herself ten years from now in the same way: but with a long white dress and a Hawaiian flower in her hair instead of a traumatizing head cold. Despite the haziness of her actual vision, the one in her mind was so clear and happy…

"Here."

And then it was over. He sat her down on the toilet seat and the vision was flushed away. "Ow," she barked, glaring as he retracted his arms. She was about to grill into him when she registered the heat warming the left side of her body. She tilted her head, eyeing the tub full of steaming water. She could smell lavender again, this time in full. "What is this?"

"What does it look like?" he motioned his hand. "It's a bath."

"With lavender."

"I found some salts under the sink."

Adrian slid her hand through her hair until it hit an unruly knot and then she pulled it out again. "Yeah, they're my mom's…but…you made this for me?"

He swiveled his shoulders. "It helps clear the senses. And," he nodded to her wet pajama pants, "you need to get cleaned up before you go back to bed."

"Thank you."

"It's nothing."

She didn't disagree. Instead, she watched him inch out of the room and shut the door behind himself. Her heart felt airy in her congested chest. As she peeled off her wet pajama pants, pale pink spaghetti top, and bra she couldn't shake her giddiness. As she'd lied in bed, tossing and turning the night before, she'd cursed the virus that had invaded her pores. But in an odd twist of fate, she now thought of the cold as some kind of blessing.

The hot water was like a massage as she dipped her feet in, one at a time. As her skin acclimated to the newfound temperature, she gradually lowered the remainder of her body in until the perfumed water covered everything up to her neck. The aches and pains were melting into the bath and the lavender fumes were blossoming deep in her lungs. Slowly, she pulled her head deeper into the water, until it covered her chin, then – with her lips tightly pinched together – it warmed up to her nose, and with her eyes closed and her breath held tight, she pulled her head completely under. Her black hair hung along the top of the water like moss until it became so bogged with water that it too sunk beneath the clear depths, swirling around Adrian's head like onyx seaweed.

She counted exactly seventy-nine seconds that she could hold her breath under the water until she had to resurface. Lavender air surged into her deprived lungs. Adrian imagined that it felt somewhat like sex games: pain and pleasure. Her fingers pushed aside the wet locks clinging to her face and tilted her head back, resting it against the tiled shower wall and closed her bloodshot eyes again.

The next time her eyes opened, the bath water was beginning to chill. With an aching groan, she grabbed the burgundy bath towel that was hanging from the rack beside the bathtub and wrapped it around her shivering body as she stood from the water. It beaded off of her as she stepped onto the bathmat. Not feeling like bothering with the blow dryer, she snatched up the hand towel and after squeezing as much water as she could out of her hair, she wrapped it around her hair like a Conehead.

"Ricky?" her voice creaked like the Tin Man's rusty joints as she slipped out of the bathroom. The sound of the rumbling fan in the bathroom faded behind her as she found her way into her room.

To her surprise, the billowing trashcan had been replaced with a fresh bag, her rumpled sheets were gone, traded for a neatly made bed of floral sheets, and beside her bed was a brand new box of tissue. She couldn't help but smile to herself as she moved to her bed and picked up the nightgown that was lying on her sheets. The burgundy towel fell into a halo around her feet and she promptly pulled the nightgown on over her moist body.

She sheets were warm when she crawled in; they felt as though they'd been pulled straight out of the dryer, which meant that Ricky must have taken the time to dry them while she was in the bath in anticipation for her being cold when she got out, because she knew those particular sheets had been tucked away in the closet for the past month. "Not domestic my ass."

"What was that?"

Adrian turned her head without lifting it from the pillow. Ricky had materialized in the doorway. "Can you do me a favor?"

"I didn't know you were so needy."

"Come here," she growled, ignoring the tone in his voice. She wanted to smirk when he submitted to her request, but chose not to when she felt her nose tingle. She reached for a tissue and rubbed her nose, feeling embarrassed to blow it in front of Ricky. "Closer," she replied in a nasally voice.

Ricky leaned towards her, enticingly close. "What?" his eyes seemed to gleam just inches from her face.

Adrian pawed his shirt and used it to pull herself up, so the tip of her nose was touching his. She glared at him as intimidating as she could in her sickly state, then the glare began to transform into an appreciative smile. _"Thank you,"_ she replied in a voice that should've sounded sexy, but instead sounded more like old tires on a gravel road between her muffled ears.

Ricky raised his hand and brushed a strand of Adrian's wet hair behind her ear. "Is there anything else I can do for you?" His face wore the same smirk it always did, but his words showed a different side of Ricky Underwood. They were genuine.

"I think you've done everything." Adrian released his shirt. Her eyelids were feeling heavy, as though liquid lead was pumping through them.

"You're cold."

"What?" Adrian managed a strained laugh. "No I'm not. You thought of everything."

"Your arms." He lifted one and brushed his hand over her skin, which looked almost white as opposed to its usual sun-kissed gleam. It was also chilled, pimpled like the surface of a lemon.

"Oh." Her eyes fluttered. "I…I didn't notice. I guess I am." A shiver rushed over her like a seizure. Seemingly without hesitation, she found Ricky crawling onto her bed and wrapping his arms around her. He felt like a heater. "Am I dreaming?"

"Go to sleep, Adrian."

She nestled into his chest as he slipped his arm around her waist. In a hazy murmur she asked, "So this is what it takes to get Ricky Underwood to stay in your bed?" She could feel the beat of his heart against her back. _Who needs chicken soup when you've got Ricky Underwood for the soul._

"You need your rest."

"You could get sick too, you know," she coughed. The vibrating cough didn't hurt so much with Ricky's hand resting on her stomach, though. It was like a shock absorber of sorts.

And his reply was all she needed to fall into a peaceful slumber: "I'm willing to take that chance."


End file.
